Secure commitment to an improvement strategy in food and drink operations

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This standard is about the skills and knowledge needed for you to secure commitment to an improvement strategy within your organisation, to support your organisation's drive to improve food and drink operations. This is important in increasing productivity and success of manufacture, processing and supply within the food and drink supply chain. Securing commitment is central to ensuring that an improvement strategy will have the resources, support and agreement it needs to be successfully implemented.

You will need to show and understand how you prepare adequately for securing the commitment in a planned and systematic way, to complement the development and agreement of the improvement strategy. You will need to comply with your company policies for strategic or business planning and take full responsibility for your actions. It involves ensuring that those with responsibility for directing and managing the resultant change and improvement across the business, are committed to delivering the policies, procedures and actions required by the strategy.

This standard applies to you if you are a manager or consultant who has responsibility for securing commitment to an improvement strategy within an organisation, to direct and manage improvement in food and drink operations including manufacturing, processing, packing or supply chain activities.

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1. your organisation's emerging improvement vision, strategy, the rationale for strategy and its change and improvement implications for your organisation
2. the main models and methods suitable for securing the commitment necessary for improvement to be formally adopted by your organisation, and their advantages and disadvantages
3. how to identify and make contact with the relevant people and stakeholders with whom you need to secure commitment to the strategy
4. how to devise and agree plans for securing commitment to an improvement strategy
5. how to assess and manage the risks and benefits associated with securing commitment to improvement strategy, and its implications for organisational change and improvement
6. the importance of contingency planning and how to do so effectively
7. how to make critical decisions
8. what skills are required to secure commitment to the strategy including, negotiating, influencing, persuading and agreeing and how to apply these skills at the appropriate level
9. the internal and resource barriers to securing commitment to strategy, and the techniques that deal with these
10. stakeholder and line management expectations and how they influence the commitment process
11. how to make changes to plans and carry out corrective direction as circumstances dictate and the associated management of priorities and rationales for colleagues
12. the communication channels used to inform, both formal and informal, and which to use dependent on the situation
13. how to evaluate the success and impact of securing commitment
14. the range of information sources and case studies available to support the rationale for improvement
15. how to give and receive feedback about securing commitment and related management of change and improvement issues